The term “intellectual property” refers to patents, trademarks, service marks, copyrights and proprietary technology such as trade secrets or know-how. Intellectual property is a special classification of intangible property, and is unique because the owner of intellectual property is protected by law from unauthorized exploitation of it by others. Computer software is considered intellectual property because it can be subject to patent, trade secret or copyright protection.
Intellectual property is a central resource for creating and maintaining commercial power. Creating, developing and managing of strategic intellectual property to ensure future licensing revenue has become an important goal in almost all industries.
Current intellectual property portfolios are most often developed tactically as the result of solving day-to-day technical problems associated with manufacturing, development, etc. The problem with this approach, however, is that portfolios are inherently the result of a reactive managing of resources; for example, in view of the day-to-day technical problems solved by inventors within the company.